This is the presentation given by Stephen Foskett at the Chicago VMUG User Conference on September 23, 2015. I present the case for "gestalt" IT that takes a holistic view of the datacenter. It includes discussion of commodity hardware, server virtualization, converged infrastructure, software-defined, cloud, and Chris Wahl.

1. Gestalt IT
Why It’s Time to Stop
Thinking In Terms of Silos
Stephen Foskett
stephen@fosketts.net
@SFoskett
Blog.Fosketts.net
© Foskett Services
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2. Stephen Foskett
is the organizer of Tech Field Day,
proprietor of Gestalt IT,
strangely interested in storage,
baseball believer,
all-around nerd, car nut,
Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert,
former first-chair bass clarinet player and punk rock frontman,
obsessive about lightbulbs, lover of a good Manhattan,
watch blogger, Apple blogger, vegetarian blogger,
dad to three kids with anagram names,
grammar obsessive, avid reader,
King of the Andals and the First Men,
humanist, frequent traveler,
and (apparently) lover of his own voice
© Foskett Services 2

3. Who Are You? How Did You Get Here?
are you "a storage admin" or a
human being with wants and
needs and diverse interests?
you can't be pigeonholed and
neither can your systems!
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4. Gestalt
the ideal of Holism,
that systems and
their properties
should be viewed
as wholes, not as
collections of parts
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5. in the beginning, computers were
just computers
and the people that managed
them knew them inside and out!
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6. Then Something Changed
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IT got too complicated…
…so we started building silos

7. now, production IT is awash in
specialists
but we all rely on each other
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8. The Biggest Problem
each of us specialists assumes
that everyone else’s stuff “just
works”
so we treat it like a black box
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9. nothing “just works”
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10. hardware, software, or people,
it's all the same
we all need to work together
more effectively
we all need better-defined
integration points
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11. Have you seen the future?
commoditization of components is a sign
virtualization is a sign
converged infrastructure is a sign
software-defined stuff is a sign
cloud platforms are a sign
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12. Commodities
the datacenter went from dozens
of CPU architectures to just one
storage went from dozens of
interconnect technologies to just
a few
almost everything talks via
Ethernet
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13. Virtualization
the virtual hardware platform is
the secret of server
commoditization
that every server thinks it’s
running on the same hardware
this makes whole servers a
commodity
(containerization is the same
thing)
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14. Convergence
converged infrastructure pulls
everything together into “building
blocks”
server and storage are co-
located and distributed
integration is the key
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15. Software-Defined
you interact with your computer
hardware using software
your computer interacts with
software on a server
server software that interacts
with other server software to
configure hardware is truly
“software-defined”
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16. Gestalt IT is already here!
"Gestalt" IT is already here
servers, storage, even
networking gear
it's all made of the same stuff
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17. Gestalt People
all this integration and software-
definition leads us to a new
platform for IT
managing the cloud requires
understanding of the connections
and interactions
we all need to embrace the
“gestalt” of the whole system
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18. Thank You!
Stephen Foskett
stephen@fosketts.net
@SFoskett
blog.fosketts.net
TechFieldDay.com
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